Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Women philosophers in social and political philosophy

Our old colleague John Alexander would like some suggestions for readings by women philosophers for a course in social and political philosophy (beyond Warren, Thomson, Nussbaum, Foot, and Gilligan). John is particularly interested in women who write from a rights-oriented approach. Iris Marion Young, Frances Kamm, Onora O'Neill, Susan Okin, and Amy Gutmann come to mind. Any other ideas for John?

You might look at some of Celia Wolf-Devine's work, especially if you end up having enough rights-oriented philosophers in the syllabus and want something to either balance out the rights-oriented folks or provide another look at care-based ethics, or both. Take a look at her CV:

I often teach this article by Maria Lugones. It's tone is completely different, which some students love. It's a great work of ethics and great way to discuss knowing "the other". http://isc.temple.edu/shea/lugones.pdf

She doesn't write specifically from/about rights per se but Susan Bordo has always been one of my favourite women philosophers and her work on philosophy's relationship to the female body sets the bar as far as I'm concerned. She's also got a particularly good (and readable!) feminist critique of "postmodern" feminist theory.

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